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Justice Department Demands Five Twitter Users' Personal Info Over an Emoji (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Back in May, the Justice Department -- apparently lacking anything better to do with its time -- sent a subpoena to Twitter, demanding a whole bunch of information on five Twitter users, including a few names that regular Techdirt readers may be familiar with. If you can't see that, it's a subpoena asking for information on the following five Twitter users: @dawg8u ("Mike Honcho"), @abtnatural ("Virgil"), @Popehat (Ken White), @associatesmind (Keith Lee) and @PogoWasRight (Dissent Doe). I'm pretty sure we've talked about three of those five in previous Techdirt posts. Either way, they're folks who are quite active in legal/privacy issues on Twitter. And what info does the DOJ want on them? Well, basically everything: [users' names, addresses, IP addresses associated with their time on Twitter, phone numbers and credit card or bank account numbers.] That's a fair bit of information. Why the hell would the DOJ want all that? Would you believe it appears to be over a single tweet from someone to each of those five individuals that consists entirely of a smiley face? I wish I was kidding. Here's the tweet and then I'll get into the somewhat convoluted back story. The tweet is up as I write this, but here's a screenshot in case it disappears. The Department of Justice's subpoena is intended to address allegations that Shafer, who has a history of spotting weak encryption and drawing attention to it, cyberstalked an FBI agent after the agency raided his home. Vanity Fair summarizes the incident: "In 2013, Shafer discovered that FairCom's data-encryption package had actually exposed a dentist's office to data theft. An F.T.C. settlement later validated Shafer's reporting, but in 2016, when another dentist's office responded to Shafer's disclosure by claiming he'd violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and broken the law, the F.B.I. raided his home and confiscated many of his electronics. Shafer was particularly annoyed at F.B.I. Special Agent Nathan Hopp, who helped to conduct the raid, and who was later involved in a different case: in March, he compiled a criminal complaint involving the F.B.I.'s arrest of a troll for tweeting a flashing GIF at journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who is epileptic. Shafer began to compile publicly available information about Hopp, sharing his findings on Twitter. The Twitter users named in the subpoena had started a separate discussion about Hopp, with one user calling Hopp the "least busy F.B.I. agent of all time," a claim that prompted Shafer's smiley-faced tweet."
They grab your info all the time for alleged copyright infringement. They're engaging in a public forum where literally anyone can read what they said--and that's the entire purpose of the medium. It's the electronic equivalent of speaking at full volume on a sidewalk. What expectation of privacy did they really have?
I really don't see a problem with "requesting" information. The police can request your info from your phone calls, your bank account, and tons of other things _for the purpose of solving crimes_. And here, it's even less bad, because requesting doesn't mean they're snooping through and finding your new secrets (like password protected data). It's merely validating WHO said WHAT. Whether a crime has been committed is an orthogonal issue.
That is to say, I can call whoever I want and police can get my info in the process of investigating crimes. However, what is a CRIME or NOT is whether or not I used that phone to call in a bomb threat. The BOMB THREAT is the crime, whether it's over Twitter (and many have been!), a sidewalk, or a phone.
The only reason people are actually caring (which they didn't when the last president was in office--Google that shit), is because... of "evil Trump." ... Even though it's the same Department of Justice and the DoJ has constantly butted heads with and leaked info about Trump. But simply a new guy as President, and somehow, all the previously "acceptable" actions of federal investigators are all now suspect. As if he has the power to force an entire agency to magically turn corrupt overnight and every employee has no free will or agency.
Out of all the scary, dragnet, evil overlord stuff that's come since the Snowden leaks. The cops merely being able to confirm that I said what I DID say (when that info was ALWAYS available to advertisers, corporations, and hackers) is the least of my worries. That's a huge leap away from thermally or x-ray scanning you inside your house, or hijacking your cellphone tower to READ YOUR PRIVATE TEXTS (all of which they've done doing).